between the sand and stone
by katriel1987
Summary: After BUABS, the boys take refuge in an abandoned cabin, where they get blindsided by a new hunt.
1. one

**title:** between the sand and stone

**rating:** _strong_ T for blood, violence, and naughty language. Oh, and one brief reference to kinkiness.

**characters:** Dean, Sam, OCs (no pairings)

**category:** Gen, drama, hurt/comfort

**word count:** 16,500 for entire story

**disclaimer:** Not mine; not getting paid; I'm just playing with them.

**summary:** After BUABS, the boys take refuge in an abandoned cabin, where a new hunt blindsides them.

**notes:** Belated Sweet Charity fic written for the awesome **pdragon76**, who gave me great prompts and didn't kick my lazy ass when I went past the deadline. Thanks to **smilla02** for the quick and insightful beta. Title from _Wherever You Will Go_ by The Calling.

* * *

Dean drove for three hours after they left Bobby's, no real idea where he was going, just _away_. Sam stayed quiet in the passenger seat, staring out the window. Dean didn't have the energy to crack any more stupid jokes, as much as he'd like to see Sam smile again.

Sometime around midnight, the fuel gauge hit E and Dean pulled into a dimly lit gas station. Sam stirred, stretching his freakishly long arms out in front of him. Dean cleared his throat.

"Let me drive," Sam said without looking at him.

Dean opened his mouth, closed it again. His shoulder had gone from throbbing to screaming over the past hour, and his vision was starting to blur at the edges. Last thing they needed was to end up wrapped around a tree.

"Okay," he said.

The dreaded crease appeared between Sam's eyebrows. "Dean—"

"I gotta take a leak," Dean said, but didn't move. His shoulder was on fire, his face hurt when he talked, and now the rest of his body was stiffening up. Last thing he wanted to do was move. Well, second-to-last. The _last_ thing he wanted to do was piss his pants, which mean he had to move whether he wanted to or not.

Setting his teeth, he levered his legs out of the car and sat there for a minute, hunched forward, left arm draped loosely across his chest. _God._ This sucked out _loud_.

"You need help?" Sam said quietly.

"_No,"_ Dean snapped, saw Sam recoil a little. Any other time, Sam would have probably rushed around the car and helped anyway. This wasn't any other time.

So Dean climbed out on his own, cursing through gritted teeth, and straightened as much as he could. Weaved his way across the parking lot and pushed on the door that said PULL.

There was a girl behind the counter, maybe twenty-five, dark-haired with an impressive rack. She'd been watching Dean's struggle with the door, but her smirk faded when she saw the side of his face, saw the way he held his arm.

"Got a bathroom?" Dean asked, too tired to look for a sign. She jerked her chin toward the back.

After he pissed, Dean washed his one good hand and then splashed water on his face, trying not to look in the mirror. The bruises were coloring now, darkening his skin from eyebrow to jaw line with blotches of blackberry and mulberry.

That bitch just _had_ to fuck up his _face._

On the bright side, he was pretty sure Sam would no longer want to collect on his rain check from that fiasco with Gordon.

Dean staggered out of the bathroom, past racks full of junk food that made his stomach flip. He grabbed a bag of chips; he could always force-feed them to Sam even if he couldn't bring himself to eat.

He made his way to the counter and paid for the chips and the gas Sam had been putting in the Impala. Checkout Girl's eyes kept flicking to him, but she didn't say anything.

He was almost to the door when the lights dimmed and his legs turned to putty. He had enough balance left to realize he was falling, but not enough to do anything about it.

"Hey, _hey!"_ Checkout Girl said, just before Dean's shoulder took out a magazine rack and his skull cracked off the grimy floor.

* * *

When Dean woke up — couldn't have been more than a few seconds later — his cheek was pressed hard against the tile. Somebody was beating a gong inside his head, but his shoulder was numb. He figured that meant he shouldn't move.

"Oh my God, oh my God," Checkout Girl said from somewhere above his head. "Should I call an ambulance?"

_No!_ His brain said decisively, but what came out sounded more like, "Nluuh."

The bell above the door jingled, and a new voice joined the party. "No, no, it's okay. I've got him. He's my brother." _Sam._ The girl probably thought he sounded calm, but Dean recognized the undercurrent. Sam was scared — and pissed.

_Well, shit._

Blue jean clad knees dropped into Dean's vision, and the next thing he saw was a ginormous hand headed for his face. He _knew_ better (this was Sam, not Meg, _Sam_), but the memories were still too close. He jerked away before he could stop himself, and _oh shit oh motherfucking FUCK_ that woke up his shoulder. He strangled a whimper, biting down until he tasted blood.

"His brother, huh?" Checkout Girl had the phone off the hook; Dean could faintly hear the dial tone over the drumbeats reverberating in his head. She sounded skeptical, and Dean thought about what it must look like, with the bruises and his flinch away from Sam's hand. It looked like what it _was,_ pretty much.

"Yeah, I'm his brother. It's okay. He's okay." Sam's voice had climbed a couple octaves.

" 'M okay," Dean muttered into the floor. His head was lying at a weird angle, but he didn't want to move, because of the hot poker that jammed into his shoulder every time he did.

"Dean, it's me. It's just me." Sam leaned down, puppy eyes set on high beam. (_But she'd done that too; she'd worn Sam's sad eyes and guilt issues so well that Dean had believed. God forgive him, he'd believed._)

Dean nodded. The tile felt sticky under his cheek. Sam placed his palm on Dean's neck, thumb against the pulse point.

"Dammit," he muttered after a minute, drawing his hand away. "Why didn't you tell me how bad off you were?"

"Di'n't know," Dean said. The gong in his head was finally falling silent.

Sam didn't look convinced. "Dude," he said, "what if this had happened while you were driving?"

Dean attempted a smile. "Would've sucked?"

Sam shook his head. "He'll be fine," he said to Checkout Girl. "He just needs some rest. I'll get him home."

"Uh-_huh,"_ she said flatly. Dean shifted his head so he could see her face. She was staring at him with open concern and just a hint of anger. Made him feel like a battered girlfriend, and if there was anything worse than passing out on a filthy floor in front of a hot chick, it was _that_.

Dean turned his head back to Sam, encouraged when the gong didn't start back up. Now if he could just figure out how to get the hell out of here without moving anything else.

"Dude, we gotta shag ass," he said quietly. "She's gonna make the call."

"I know," Sam muttered. "Can you get up?"

Dean gritted his teeth. "Maybe. Yeah. Just... help me."

He grabbed Sam's outstretched hand and somehow tamped down the yell that tried to escape when Sam pulled him upright. Swearing through clenched teeth, he hunched forward until the pain ebbed a little. Managed not to pull away when Sam rested a hand on his good arm.

"Look," he said over Sam's shoulder, "we've had a shitty couple of days, okay? We don't need any more."

Checkout Girl gave him a blank stare, not convinced. She probably meant the best, wanted to save him from a bad situation, but her "help" was abso-fucking-lutely the _last_ thing they needed right now.

"Let's get out of here," he said to Sam.

Sam kept an arm around his shoulders all the way out to the car, got him settled into the passenger seat. Sat down heavily on the driver's side with a thundercloud hovering over his head.

"How much blood did you lose?" Sam's voice was too controlled, like Dad's had always sounded just before all hell broke loose.

Dean opened and closed his mouth a couple times. Finally settled on, "Quite a bit."

Sam's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "You should've let me look at it," he said. Still too calm.

"Look, Jo fixed it up. I thought I was fine—"

"Fixed it up before or after it had my _thumb_ in it?" Sam's voice shot up at the end, and Dean jumped, bumping his head on the window.

"I'm sorry," Sam said. "I'm sorry—"

Dean waved his good hand half-heartedly. "Shut up," he said. Flashed back to _"So you remember all that?",_ but didn't say it. "Look, we need a place to lie low for a while. I think I know where. You remember Adam Decker?"

"The name sounds familiar."

"He used to hunt with Dad off and on. We worked with him quite a bit while you were gone. He had a cabin not far from here."

"Should we call or something?"

Dean snorted. "Not unless you want to do a séance. He's dead. Got himself killed hunting zombies."

"What about his cabin?"

"His daughter owns it now, I guess, but she never visits. Dad and me used to crash there sometimes, after Decker died."

Sam considered for a minute. He had dark circles forming under his eyes — looked like he hadn't slept in a week. "What's wrong with a motel?" he said.

"The cabin's close. We could hole up there for a while, wouldn't even need to use the credit cards." _It was a motel you went missing from. It was a motel where Meg tried to make me kill you the first time. I've damn well had enough of motels this past week._

Sam sighed, nodded. "Okay," he said.

* * *

Dean fell asleep in the passenger seat as soon as the pain in his shoulder receded to a dull throb. It was twilight when he drifted off; Sam woke him later, after dark, when they got close to the turn-off for the cabin.

Dean had a crick in his neck and his eyes were crusted shut, but his shoulder felt blessedly numb. He sat up straighter, reaching to touch his face. It was swollen from eyebrow to jaw, and his left eye didn't open completely, even after he rubbed the grit away.

Sam stared straight ahead, both hands on the wheel. "We're getting close," he said. "Look familiar?"

"Uh...sure." Pine trees looked the same everywhere, but Dean would know the road when he saw it. After Decker's death, he and Dad had stayed at that cabin just about every time they went through Minnesota.

Dean nearly fell asleep again as soon as Sam stopped talking. He felt drained, and the rumble of the Impala's engine echoed hollowly in his head. He was crashing fast; his body had already been worn down by stress and lack of sleep, even before he got shot.

"Dean, hey." Sam tapped his arm. "Dean, stay awake. You have to tell me where to turn, remember?" He was trying to rein in the worry, but Dean could hear it in his voice anyway.

"Yeah, okay." Dean leaned his head against the window and stared out at the dark shapes of trees sliding past. For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. Dean's eyelids got heavier by the second.

A sliver of unpaved road slid past his vision, pale against the dark trees. Dean blinked. "That was it," he said. "We just passed it."

Sam huffed, then hit the brakes hard enough that Dean would have yelled at him under normal circumstances. Dean's body didn't like the sudden stop, so he settled on a slurred groan instead, shifting to brace his left arm more firmly against his chest. That drew another "sorry" from Sam. Dean ignored it.

"Just turn around, asshat," he said.

"You're the one who was supposed to be navigating!"

"Shut up," Dean muttered. Sam sounded like he was gearing up for an argument, but Dean didn't have it in him. He slumped against the door as Sam flipped a sharp U-turn, listening for the sound of gravel crunching under the tires. _Almost there._ He was so tired.

Sam had to be exhausted too. God only knew what that bitch had done with his body while she'd had it; Dean was willing to bet that sleeping hadn't been high on her list of priorities. Sam's head was starting to droop forward, which might explain the sharp tone. Sammy always got grumpy when he was tired, ever since he was a baby.

_His body just got hijacked and used to commit at least one murder, but yeah, let's blame it on the tiredness._ Optimistic bullshit came easy when he was talking to Sam, but it was a little harder to pull off inside his own head.

The road had grown up since Dean had been there last; there was just enough space for the Impala between tangled thickets of pine brush. After a bumpy, tedious twenty-minute drive, they pulled up in front of the cabin.

It looked weathered in the glow of the headlights, more run-down than Dean remembered. Paint was peeling off in long flaky strips, but the basic structure looked intact. All things considered, not a bad place to lie low after their shitty week. Dean hoped that no other hunters would think to look for them there. From the state of the place, it looked like nobody had visited it in a long time.

Dean pushed his door open slowly, and cold night air hit him in the face. It smelled of pine and water and damp earth. A loon called from off in the trees—there was a lake there somewhere, but he had never seen it.

Sam did come around the car and help this time, offering a hand to pull Dean up and then steadying him once he was on his feet. Dean closed his eyes and inhaled. City air never smelled like this.

There were stars showing through the trees overhead; the graceful swoop of the milky way was broken only by the dark clumps of pine. Sam slung both of their bags over his left shoulder and kept his right hand on Dean's arm all the way to the cabin. Probably didn't want a repeat of that fall in the store.

The cabin door was locked, and Sam didn't waste his time hunting for a key, just took a page out of Dean's book and kicked the door open. Dean remembered about two seconds later that the key was hidden in a pine stump in the yard, but he decided not to say anything.

The inside of the cabin smelled musty, but the flashlight showed furniture still covered in plastic, the way he and Dad had left it the last time they'd stayed there. Dean felt a sudden, sharp pang of loss, just looking around. Last time he'd been here, Dad had been with him. He could almost smell the leather and gunpowder, traces of his father hiding in the corners with the dust.

Sam tugged the tarp off the closest couch, sat Dean down on it, and went to find a lantern. The cabin had never had electricity—water came from a hand pump in the back yard, and there was an outhouse set back in the trees. Decker hadn't been much for modern conveniences.

Dean was already dozing, head resting on the arm of the couch, when Sam came back carrying not one but _three_ lanterns. And the medical kit.

Oh, _shit._

"Can't this wait 'til morning?" Dean slurred.

"No," Sam said. "I don't want to risk infection. It needs to be done tonight." He pulled the plastic off a nearby coffee table, wiped it down with alcohol, and started spreading out supplies. He kept his head down, and his eyes looked dark in the lantern light.

Dean sighed. He wasn't getting out of this one. "Codeine first?" he asked hopefully. Sam handed him a couple tablets and a flask of water to wash them down with. Dean stared at the silver flask.

_On the floor, so so close, while the demon in Sam's skin beat the shit out of him. Just out of reach; his fingertips almost brushed it._

"Hey," Sam said, carefully not looking at the flask. "Hey, you gonna take those?"

Dean nodded, threw back the pills with a gulp of holy water. He handed the flask back, and Sam dropped it on the table like it was burning his hand. Made Dean wonder just how much Sam really did remember. Too much for his own good, probably.

Sam helped Dean out of his coat and outer shirt, sucked in a breath when he saw the ragged, bloody gauze, half of it shoved into the bullet hole.

Dean's head was already buzzing; powerful painkillers on an empty stomach didn't take long to kick in. His hands felt tingly and numb and he couldn't keep his eyes focused.

"Jus' do it," he slurred, and passed out.

* * *

Dean lost consciousness before Sam could even touch the wound, which was good. What wasn't good was the fact that the crusted gauze was embedded in the bullet hole. (Sam tried not to think about how it had gotten that way.) Ripping it off wasn't an option — the last thing he wanted to do was re-start the bleeding. He'd have to soak it out.

Sam took one of the lanterns and headed out to get water from the yard. He'd need to build a fire in the fireplace, to heat the water and the cabin itself. There was firewood already stacked against the wall in the living room, so at least he didn't have to worry about that. He wondered who had cut it — Dean, maybe, or Dad, back when Sam was still at Stanford, before everything went to hell.

On the way back from the pump, Sam stumbled twice and then almost walked straight into the wall. He was barely still on his feet, but Dean was _out,_ and this was probably the best chance he'd get to clean the wound without causing his brother excruciating pain.

With Dean snoring on the couch, Sam built a fire, then paced a crooked, wobbly trail while waiting for the water to heat. He was afraid he'd fall asleep if he sat down.

Upon soaking off the gauze, he found that the wound didn't look as bad as he had anticipated. Sure, it was ragged and ugly and still oozing blood, but he saw no signs of infection. It was too late for stitches, so he cleaned the wound, bandaged it with fresh gauze, and made a mental note to start Dean on antibiotics just to be safe.

Toward the back of the cabin, Sam found a walk-in closet stacked high with clear plastic tubs, most of them labeled clearly with DECKER in a man's no-nonsense handwriting. One of the tubs — toward the back of the closet — said MALLORY in loopy, pretty letters. It contained blankets; Sam pulled out two. One he threw over Dean, and the other he took with him to the second couch.

He tugged off the tarp, sneezed into the resulting cloud of dust, and flopped down. The couch was scratchy and the springs were poking out and his legs hung off the end. It was _perfect._ He pulled the blanket up and turned onto his side, where he could see Dean.

The burn on Sam's arm was hurting, knife-sharp and bone-deep, but he fell asleep before he could do anything about it.

* * *

Dean spent the next twenty-six hours dead to the world. Sam slept fitfully for the first ten, tormented by jerky silent-film dreams filled with arterial bleeding and sudden, ugly death. (_They might be memories,_ he thought, and it made him want to crawl out of his own skin, shed his bloodstained hands.)

He roused Dean three times to make him drink water, and once convinced him to pee into a jar, which would have provided _permanent_ blackmail material under different circumstances. Dean didn't wake up, not really; his half-mast eyes were always glazed, and he never managed to get out a intelligible word before falling back asleep.

By hour seventeen, Sam was already going stir-crazy. He'd found an old broom and dustpan and had swept up the years-old layer of dust on the floor. He'd carried in more firewood from the yard. He was running out of ways to keep himself busy.

As happy as he was to be alone inside his own head, he couldn't stand the silence. There were too many things he didn't need to think about right now, and he'd never been good at not thinking. Sam Winchester: hunter, scholar, over-analyzer.

(_He'd dreamed of a child, a little boy no more than five, and the way the boy's last breaths sounded and the way Dean wouldn't pull the trigger._)

Sam finally found an axe leaned up against the back wall of the cabin, and with it he attacked a small dead pine not far from the outhouse. It was mindless, repetitive work, which was exactly what he'd been looking for.

The weather was overcast, with a breeze that made a sound like the ocean in the pine trees behind the cabin. The air was chilly, but Sam was sweating before long. The sweat stung when it ran into the burn on his arm — sparked off a deep, hair-raising ache that set his teeth on edge — but he didn't stop. Not until Dean said, "Dude, what did that tree do to you?"

Sam dropped the axe and turned. Dean was on the porch, good shoulder against a beam, looking like he might fall over if the wind picked up. His eyes were bloodshot and he was squinting against the dim sunlight in a way Sam recognized from too many post-vision migraines.

"What are you _doing?"_ Sam clattered up the steps, put a hand on Dean's elbow before he could stop himself. "You should be in bed."

"Dude, I've been in bed _forever."_ Dean shook off Sam's hand. "I'm fine. I needed rest, and I got it."

"Yeah, sure. Rest was all you needed." Sam snorted. Up close, he could see that Dean's color was a little better, but nowhere close to normal. He was still running low on blood and even lower on energy.

"Dude, your hands," Dean said. Sam jerked them up reflexively, heart hammering. (_blood, still warm, sticky between his fingers_) It was a relief to see only popped blisters, ugly little raw circles oozing clear fluid. They hurt, now that he was thinking about them.

"Guess I got carried away," was all he said. Dean shot him a disbelieving look, but didn't say anything.

"You really do need to go back to bed," Sam said, returning to safer ground. When Dean bristled and started to protest, Sam gave him a gentle shove. He nearly fell over backward — only a desperate grab at the beam saved him — and his face went white again.

"Fine, huh?" Sam said.

"All right, dammit." Dean sounded like he was almost as sick of sleeping as Sam was of watching him sleep. In any case, he let Sam help him back to the couch, and didn't even complain too much when Sam checked his shoulder. The wound appeared to be closing up cleanly. Sam insisted that Dean start on antibiotics anyway. Dean retaliated by insisting that Sam clean and bandage his own burned arm and blistered hands.

"And don't even think about going near that axe again," he said. "You've cut enough firewood to last a whole winter."

Sam rolled his eyes, but he wouldn't have been able to pick up the axe again, anyway — his hands were already stiffening and the muscles in his back and shoulders were getting sore.

Dean settled back down onto the couch and his eyes started to drift closed. That was it. Sam couldn't sit around and listen to Dean snore for another day.

"How big is this place, anyway?" he asked abruptly.

Dean's eyes snapped back open. "You mean Decker's property?" At Sam's nod, he continued, "Forty, sixty acres, I think. There's a lake back through the trees, I guess, but I haven't seen it. Decker always said it wasn't worth the walk."

A boring lake: better than spending another day cooped up in here. "Look, you get some rest," Sam said. "I'm gonna walk back and take a look at that lake."

Dean tensed. "By yourself?"

"Dude. I'm twenty-three."

That earned Sam a sour look, but Dean must have already realized he wasn't going to win this one. "Be careful," he said. "Take a gun. You still got that charm Bobby gave you?"

Sam narrowly resisted the urge to roll his eyes again. Echoes of the old days: _Yes, Dean, I have my school books. Yes, Dean, I have my knife._

"I'll keep my phone on," he said. "If you need anything, just call, okay? Anything at all. Don't be an idiot and try to do too much."

"Yes, Mommy." Dean didn't respond to the mother hen act nearly as gracefully as Sam did.

There was still a faint trail winding through the trees, and Sam followed it, walking like he had somewhere to be. It felt good to stretch his legs. Felt good to be _able_ to stretch his legs.

(_The demon had used every inch of his height, had played up his sheer size in ways he never did. He remembered that much._)

Twenty minutes in, the trail opened up to a small white sand beach. Sam stopped at the edge of it, breathing deeply. The lake was big — much bigger than he'd expected — and, in his opinion, well worth the walk. Ripples lapped at the shore, and the air smelled of mud and lake weeds.

He walked out onto the sand, glancing up and down the shoreline. The forest almost met the lake in places, but where he stood there was a sizeable sand bar separating trees from water. The sand near the water was dirty, spotted with bits of wood and dead weeds.

The water itself was gray and opaque, a mirror reflecting the monotone clouds. Sam knelt and poked a finger in; it was cold. Would be year-round, probably, but especially now, when the weather was chilly.

"I know what you did," a woman's voice said.

Sam shot to his feet, whirled to look behind him. There was no one there, nothing but sand and trees and overcast sky.

"I know what you did to her."

A flash of memory: _A small woman with blond hair, tied down, face turned away from him. Jo? Someone else he didn't remember?_

"I know. What. You. Did. To her!"

He saw her then, wild-eyed, blood streaming from her chest and the corner of her mouth. She stood where there had been empty sand five seconds earlier. Her skin was gray, darkening to black around sunken eye sockets. He had never seen her before.

She stepped forward, reached out toward him. He couldn't move. He _couldn't move._

"I know what you did," she said, and with a flick of her hand, she threw him into the water.

It was cold. Oh _God_ it was cold. Sam's mouth opened in a reflexive, airless gasp, and he left a trail of bubbles through the murky water. He tried to wave his arms, kick his legs, but it felt like he was tangled in a fishing net that was dragging him down down _down._

His foot hit bottom, sending up a lazy swirl of silt. His lungs screamed and his heartbeat pounded in his head. He needed out, needed _air,_ but he couldn't move. She was wrapped around him, tangled like yarn, holding him to the bottom.

He struggled, flailing limbs that had already gone numb from the cold. The more he fought, the tighter she held. Just before his vision went, he saw her face, heard her voice in his head: _"This is justice."_

His chest strained under the crushing weight, and his mouth opened against his will. Water flooded in, poured down his throat and filled his lungs.

It felt exactly like dying.

**tbc...**


	2. two

**notes, disclaimers, etc.:** See first chapter.

* * *

Sam woke up choking, his body wrenched with spasms as he coughed up murky water. The side of his face was pressed into the sand. His throat hurt; his chest hurt worse.

"—hey, hey, are you with me?" Dean's voice swam into his hearing. "Sam, hey—"

He drew a breath and tried to answer, but just started coughing again, curling in on himself.

"Take it easy, man. Just breathe." Dean's voice was shaking, catching on every other sound. "God, Sam," he said. "You scared the _shit_ out of me."

Sam coughed up a glob of something that tasted like algae, spat it out, and said his first raspy words since rejoining the land of the living: "Not literally, I hope."

Dean snorted a shaky laugh. "Pretty goddamn close."

Sam hacked up more pond scum and then lay still, enjoying the oxygen, even though his throat was so raw it felt like breathing Drano. Finally, he managed to ask, "What happened?"

"I was hoping you could tell me," Dean said. "I heard a splash, saw your footprints leading toward the water, and put two and two together when you didn't come up."

"You...followed me?" Sam turned his head, blinked sand and silt out of his eyelashes. He was terribly cold, his entire body shivering now. "Why?"

Dean made a sound that was too raw to be called a laugh. "The last time I let you out of my sight, you got possessed," he said. "You really have to ask why?"

"You pulled me out." Not a question. Dean was soaked to the skin, red bleeding through at his shoulder, and he was shaking almost as much as Sam was.

"Yeah. I was just about to start CPR when you started coughing." A violent shudder shook Dean's body, and he leaned forward, right hand pressed against his left shoulder. Which was bleeding. And contaminated by filthy lake water. _Dammit._

"So," Dean said, fighting for normal, "you wanna enlighten me? Why the hell did you decide to go for a swim?"

Sam managed to sit up, hands on the ground for balance. "It was a woman," he said, ignored the way Dean's eyebrows shot up. "I think she was dead. Pretty sure she was dead."

"Ghost?"

"Maybe. She said..."

"What?" Dean prompted when Sam didn't continue.

"She said, _I know what you did._ And I saw something — a memory, I guess. A blond girl, tied to a chair — I couldn't see her face, but it must have been Jo."

"Jo?"

"Yeah. She's okay, right? I mean, I didn't..." He trailed off, didn't want to think about all the possibilities.

"She's fine," Dean said. "She was shaken up, but she wasn't hurt."

_I know what you did to her._

Sam wondered just how sure Dean was that Jo hadn't been hurt. He remembered the confrontation — the demon threatening to kill Jo, Dean refusing to shoot — but not how they'd gotten to that point. Not how he'd captured Jo. Nothing that might have happened before.

His wet clothing clung to his skin, and water and sand stung in the broken blisters on his hands and the burn on his arm. Dean didn't look any better, and there was that re-opened bullet hole to worry about.

"It wasn't your fault," Dean said, looking down at the dirty sand. "None of it was your fault."

Sam drew a few more hacksaw breaths, let the words rattle around his head for a minute. "I know," he said.

_It wasn't. This time._

_But that doesn't fix anything._

* * *

It took them forty-five minutes to make it back. Sam's legs were dead from the cold, and if Dean's constant stumbling was any indication, he wasn't much better off.

Back at the cabin, they shucked their wet clothes, built up the fire, and wrapped up in coarse blankets, fighting off hypothermia while Sam told Dean the few details he'd noticed about the ghost.

"It looked like a bullet wound," he said. "Right in the heart. Whoever killed her knew what they were doing."

"She could be anyone," Dean said. "Some poor random chick who got ganked and dumped in the lake. God only knows where she was from. We'll probably _never_ find her."

"Don't be such an optimist," Sam said.

Eventually, their shivering died down, and so did Sam's coughing. He still felt like he'd been swallowing sandpaper, and there was a slight rattle in his lungs when he breathed deeply. Overall, though, he wasn't feeling bad, considering that he'd expected to wake up dead.

Sam didn't think that the ghost could reach the cabin, but Dean wasn't willing to risk it.

"We find a motel," he said, shedding his cocoon of blankets. "I don't want her showing up and dragging you off in the middle of the night. We can find a motel that has wireless and take a shot at figuring out who she is. Was."

He dug clothes out of their duffel bags, tossing a t-shirt and a pair of jeans in Sam's direction. "Get dressed, and then we're out of here."

"I need to look at your shoulder."

"It'll wait 'til we get to the motel."

Sam experienced a vivid mental image of bacteria multiplying inside Dean's wound. "Dean—"

"Sam, no," Dean said firmly. "It's stopped bleeding. It'll be fine."

They packed up quickly. Dean drove this time — flatly refused to let Sam behind the wheel. The nearest town was fifteen miles back the way they'd come. It had one motel with wireless internet access. They had to pay extra for the internet, but it went on Leonard Dykstra's credit card, so Sam didn't worry about it too much.

They moved their stuff inside the room, and Dean promptly fell asleep on top of the covers, still wearing his jacket and boots. Sam ground his teeth. He needed to clean that wound, and now he couldn't do it without waking Dean.

In the end, he decided that halting the procreation of bacteria was more important than Dean's nap, so he treated the wound. Dean rewarded him with a myriad of slurred insults relating to his character, his sexual habits, and, interestingly enough, his parentage. There was also something about a sheep and some chickens, but Sam was pretty sure he didn't want to know.

He forced another dose of antibiotics down Dean's throat, took some himself, bandaged his blisters and burned arm, and then fell asleep on the other bed. He never did get around to taking his shoes off.

* * *

Sam woke first, sometime after dark. His head throbbed, his teeth were fuzzy, and he was pretty sure that something was rotting under his tongue. He rolled over slowly. His throat felt a little better, but there was still a rattle deep in his chest.

Dean was still asleep, sprawled on his back. His right arm was hanging over the edge of the bed, and his left was draped carefully across his chest. He was breathing deeply and evenly, and enough color had returned to his face that his freckles didn't stand out anymore.

A tickle in his throat sparked it off, and Sam bent over at the waist, coughing uncontrollably. The spell didn't subside; he staggered to the bathroom and bent over the toilet to hack up globs of grayish-yellow stuff that tasted like a cross between cat piss and dead fish.

After he got done coughing up chunks of lung, he felt a little better. He wiped sweat and snot off his face, rinsed his mouth, and went back out into the room. Dean was stirring, turning his head against the pillow. One eye cracked open and fixed on Sam's face.

"Dude." Dean's voice came out sounding like a file on rusty metal. He cleared his throat, tried again. "That sounded nasty."

"It was," Sam said hoarsely. After tossing back another dose of antibiotics, he checked his temperature. No fever...yet. Pneumonia would pretty much be the shit icing on the god-awful cake that had made up the past week.

Dean sat up, rubbing his eyes and making the universal _something died in my mouth_ face. Sam felt very little sympathy. At least Dean hadn't awakened coughing up pond scum. He had no room to complain.

"You done any research yet?" Dean asked, swinging his legs down to the floor.

"Nope. Too busy coughing," Sam said. Dean gave him the Big Brother Stare, and he quickly added, "Yes, I'm taking antibiotics. No, I don't have pneumonia."

"Yeah, well. Don't catch it," Dean said, as though Sam had been planning a bout of life-threatening illness and needed to be talked out of it.

Sam sat down at the tiny desk, picked up his notebook, and flipped it open to the first empty page. "Thanks. I'll make a note to myself. 'Dean advises against contracting pneumonia. Will take into consideration.' "

"Smartass."

"Learned from the best."

Dean grinned a loopy grin. He was either medicated or half-asleep, possibly both.

"I meant Dad," Sam said.

"Oh." Dean looked mildly affronted. He made it to his feet on his second try and wandered into the bathroom. The shower started up a minute later. Sam gritted his teeth at the thought of the water soaking through carefully applied bandages, but he didn't blame Dean for wanting to wash off the lake scum. He was itching for a shower, too — quite literally.

While he waited for Dean to get done, Sam powered up the laptop and connected to the motel's wireless internet. As usual, he would begin by researching the property's history. Dean's guess could be right — it might have been a random girl from somewhere else who was unlucky enough to get murdered and dumped into the lake. But in Sam's experience, she was more likely to be connected to the property in some way.

Looking for previous owners turned up nothing; the land had been in the Decker family for generations, and there were no deaths of young women recorded. Doing a local search for the name Decker brought up dozens of pages — birth announcements, obituaries, a couple of divorce cases. Among them was the divorce of Adam and Rhiannon Decker, with custody of their only child — a girl named Mallory — going to Adam. That must be the daughter Dean had mentioned; Decker had never had any other kids, as far as Sam could tell.

Dean came out of the bathroom in a puff of steam, toweling his hair with one hand. He looked much more awake. "I re-bandaged my shoulder," he said when Sam looked up. "How's your arm?"

"Fine." It was healing; that much was true. Sam tried not to look at it too much, because seeing the faint shadow of the binding symbol made him want to claw his skin off. _Get it off get it off get it OFF. Get it OUT._

_I know what you did to her,_ the girl had said, and Sam didn't even know for sure whom she'd been talking about.

Sam did a search for Mallory Decker, one last-ditch attempt to find some connection. He got the expected results: a birth announcement, a mention in the article about her parents' divorce. Then he stopped, staring at the screen. "Oh," he said.

"What?" Dean asked.

"I think I know why Decker's daughter never comes out to the cabin." Sam swiveled the laptop so Dean could see the screen. A senior picture stared out — a girl, maybe eighteen, dark-haired with green eyes and a fake for-the-camera smile. The caption said MALLORY DECKER.

Dean looked up from the picture. "And?"

"And, that's the girl I saw at the lake. The ghost." Sam turned the laptop back around. "She's dead."

Dean shook his head slowly. "Wait a minute. She was never even reported missing, was she?"

"No, she wasn't." Sam tapped a pen against the edge of the desk as he thought it out. "Decker probably told everybody she went to college. The last time the local paper mentioned her was right after she graduated." He clicked back to the article that accompanied the picture. "It says she had a scholarship."

"So, what? He didn't report her death because she was killed by something he was hunting?" Dean suggested. "Because it would've been too hard to explain to the cops?"

"All I saw was the bullet wound," Sam said. "I don't know of anything supernatural that uses bullets. People get shot all the time; he could've come up with a dozen different stories. And Mallory must have had friends, right? Why would he have just... let them go on thinking that she was alive?" He paused. "Unless..."

"Unless," Dean said quietly, "he had something to hide."

"Like the fact that _he_ killed her." Sam finished the thought.

"That son of a bitch." Dean stood up, paced to the bed, back to the desk, to the bed again. "She was his _daughter."_

"You think he shot her," Sam said, staring at the screen. He remembered her pale skin, the blood at the corner of her mouth. No wonder she haunted the lake. She'd grown up there, had been bound there in life and in death.

Dean nodded, sat down hard on the edge of the bed. "Makes sense, doesn't it?" He said. "He told us that she was at college. He lied to everybody, even other hunters, and he kept us away from the lake. Kept us from finding out the truth." He shook his head. "If he wasn't dead, I'd kill him myself," he said. "Dad hunted with him. _I_ hunted with him."

"You didn't know," Sam said.

"We stayed at that fucking cabin. Right next to that fucking lake." Dean scrubbed a hand through his hair. "What year did she graduate?"

"1999."

"Dad started hunting with him in early 2000. She hadn't even been dead a year." Dean sounded stunned, and Sam could understand why. There were plenty of hunters who were bastards — or obsessed, like Gordon — but a hunter who would murder his own daughter, then carry on hunting like nothing had happened? What the fuck was _that?_

"Why is she still here?" Dean said, raising his head. "He was a hunter. He would have cremated her. What's holding her at the lake?"

Sam shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe she lost a necklace in the lake, a piece of clothing — she lived her whole life here. It could be anything. Or maybe he didn't cremate her. Maybe he dumped her in the lake and just never went back."

"He knew," Dean said. "That was why he didn't go there, didn't want _us_ going there. He knew she haunted that lake. He didn't do a damn thing about it."

_Maybe he didn't want to,_ Sam thought. _Maybe he knew he deserved it. Maybe he was too scared to face her._

"Either way, we've got nothing to salt and burn," Sam said. "And we can't appease her by handing over her dad—"

"Unfortunately," Dean muttered.

"—because he's already dead."

Dean looked thoughtful. Sam immediately began to worry. "What?" he said.

"Nothing," Dean said. "Just thinking. Look, man, it's late. I know we both slept most of the day, but we aren't exactly running on all cylinders right now. She's as dead as she's gonna get. Let's sleep on it tonight, get our heads back on straight, and start working up a plan in the morning."

Sam sighed; Dean was right. "Okay," he said.

* * *

Dean woke before sunrise, when the sky outside was just beginning to lighten from black to gray. Sam was still asleep, a silent dark shape in the other bed. Dean slipped out of bed and pulled on his boots. Quietly, he gathered his stuff into his duffel bag. Sam never stirred. He wasn't coughing in his sleep, and Dean was glad of that; he didn't like the sound of that cough.

It was raining outside — drizzling, really, tiny drops of glacier-cold rain. Dean pulled his jacket closer around him and wished for coffee. No time for that, though. Once Sam woke up, it wouldn't take him long to figure out where Dean had gone.

Dean's shoulder was stiff and sore, but he'd survived enough injuries to tell that it was healing. For one thing, it was starting to itch deep down, which never failed to drive him crazy even though it was a good sign.

He made it to the lake just as the sun was coming up, bleaching the cloudy sky pale gray. He climbed out of the car, cocked his shotgun, and drew a breath. It wasn't him this chick wanted; it was Sam. She had no reason to go after him.

_This is the stupidest idea you've ever had,_ he informed himself. _And that's sayin' something._

It had, after all, been his idea to bang that waitress in Tampa. The one with bright purple hair, eleven piercings, and a tattoo of Strawberry Shortcake on her ass. The one with the whips. And the fucking _knives._

In his defense, she'd had a really great ass, even with the tattoo.

Damp sand squeaked under his feet as he walked, and he squinted against the fine, cold mist. Had he seen the lake in a picture, Dean might have thought it was pretty; now it just made his skin crawl. His eyes were drawn to the spot where Sam had met up with Mallory Decker's ghost. It had rained slowly all night, but not enough to wash the tracks away.

_Sam was floating facedown, one hand stretched out in front of him. His left foot was tangled in weeds and mud. He wasn't moving._

_When Dean dragged Sam out onto the sand (long sasquatch limbs flopping everywhere, cold skin and closed eyes), he still wasn't moving. His mouth hung open slightly and dark strands of hair clung to his paper-white face. He wasn't moving. He wasn't breathing. And Dean thought no, no. Not like this. Not after everything._

_Dean thought, it won't end like this._

_Dean thought, I won't let it._

He stopped a few feet from the edge of the water and waited, restless, eyes scanning the horizon. It was still cold; the sun wasn't doing much more than giving off weak light. Dean's back and shoulder were stiff, and his entire face felt numb, not just the left side where deep purple was fading to yellow.

He rested the shotgun on his shoulder, finger on the trigger, and waited.

_Come on, bitch._

If she could read his thoughts — and Sam's experience seemed to indicate that she could — that probably wasn't the smartest thing to say.

_Come on, Mallory. I know you're here. Show yourself. I just want to talk._

That got immediate results, in the form of an icy gust. The weather had been cold all day, but this air was _arctic._ Dean's eyes burned and the skin on his face went instantly numb. He shivered, tightened his grip on the gun.

Then she was there, barefoot on the sand. He could just barely tell that her eyes had once been green; she looked faded now, almost grayscale. Only the blood was bright, dripping crimson from her chest and mouth.

"Why have you come here?" Even as a ghost, she reminded Dean of her father: same inflection, same tilt of the head, his face reflected in the curve of her cheekbones and in her slightly crooked nose.

"I just want to talk to you." _God_ he was an idiot, _talking_ to a ghost. Maybe he felt a tiny bit sorry for her, this hunter's daughter who'd been murdered by the very person responsible for protecting her.

(Dad would have known better than to try reasoning with a violent ghost, but Dad wasn't here now, was he?)

"About what?" Mallory said. Was that a hint of curiosity, a flicker in those sunken eyes? She stepped closer.

"About what happened to you." He drew a lung-chilling breath and gave it his best shot. "Listen, Mallory, your dad is gone. He's dead, and he won't hurt anybody ever again."

She shimmered, transparent for an instant, faint against water and sky. Her expression didn't change.

"Aren't you tired of being here?" Dean worked in as much sincerity as he could. "You didn't deserve what happened to you, but it's over now. He's gone, and it's over. All you have to do is let go."

Another faint shimmer, and Dean waited, his breath making white fog in the air between them. _Please. Please just let go. Just...walk into The Light or whatever it is you're supposed to do._

Mallory moved closer, her pale face impassive. She reached out, trailed icy fingers down Dean's cheek, and he shivered but managed to not jerk away.

"You," she said, her voice cold and forceful as the currents in the lake. "You're just like him. You're just like all of them. You would have done it too."

He backed away, and she followed. "I don't — what do you mean?" He said. "I wouldn't have hurt you."

"Oh, but you would. You're just like him." She grabbed his head in both hands, and he gasped, white-hot pain driving him to his knees.

Flash: _It was dark and she was looking down, rifling through her purse for her keys. Smoke crept into her view and she glanced up, searching for the fire, but it wasn't a fire, not a fire, and she was a hunter's child and she knew, but it was too late. She opened her mouth to scream or maybe to chant but the smoke flowed down her throat and her body straightened and she felt her mouth curve up in a smirk._

Flash:_ "Why are you doing this?" A small blond girl, crying, bloody arm clutched to her chest. "Please, Mal, stop..." There was a pistol in the girl's hand, the dark barrel not wavering from Mallory's chest. Furniture lay shattered around them, and glass crunched under Mallory's foot as she stepped forward, and the girl fired. Her aim was true and Mallory's body jerked but the thing in her skin didn't stop and the girl (Addie, her name was Addie and Mallory loved her) never got off another shot._

Flash:_ Tied to a chair, devil's trap around her feet, Mallory looked up and saw her father and the demon smiled with her mouth. "So good to see you, Daddy. I almost thought you weren't coming."_

_A muscle jumped in Daddy's jaw but he didn't answer, he just started reading Latin and the demon said, "You know, I got your little Mallory shot, right in the heart," but he kept reading, didn't miss a syllable. His face showed that he didn't believe it, couldn't believe it, and Mallory thought, Save me Daddy please you have to save me._

_The demon said, "Mallory's already dead, and she still thinks you'll save her," and it laughed, and Daddy's voice cracked but he went on reading, kept reading until the demon screamed, until it tore out of Mallory's body and she choked and started gagging on blood. He ran to untie her but she was gone before he ever touched the ropes._

Dean curled up, clutching his head. Mallory hovered over him, all blood and hollow bones. "You see?" She whispered. "You're just like him. You'd have done it too."

Flash: _"She is a human being!" Bobby was looking at Dean like he'd never seen him before, but Dean didn't care. If he was trapped like that — screaming inside his own head, watching it all happen, powerless to stop it, to save anybody — he knew what he'd want. He couldn't leave her like this. He couldn't._

"_And we're gonna put her out of her misery!" He glanced at Meg, then back at his brother. "Sam, finish it."_

"Just like him," Mallory said.

Flash: _"Finish it!" Dean said, even though he knew that the real Meg Masters — the innocent girl behind the face — would die. She's better off dead than this, he thought._

"You. Your brother. My father." Mallory was going fuzzy at the edges, her movements more jerky, more ghost-like. She raised her arms; the air crackled, and sand began to whip around them. "You're all the same. _All the same."_

Flash: _Dean told him to finish it, and Sam did, kept reading until the demon poured out and pretty blond Meg Masters from Andover, Massachusetts started coughing up blood._

_And he'd made up his mind, he'd decided that she was better off dead, but now he was watching her bleed and hurt and die, and his decision didn't feel so right anymore._

Dean flinched back to the present, squinting against flying sand. He could still see Mallory through the maelstrom, could still make out the fury set in the planes of her dead face.

As he watched, bottomless black seeped across her eyes like spilled oil, and she smiled.

_Oh, FUCK._

**tbc...**


	3. three

**notes, disclaimers, etc.:** See first chapter.

* * *

Dean tried to crawl away, but he didn't get far. Steel bands clamped around his ankles, pulling him back, toward the lake. Mallory's face was cruel now, rather than just angry; her eyes stayed demon-black and she kept smiling as she dragged him toward the water. He'd dropped his gun when she took him down. He flailed for it, but found only sand; his fingers left long grooves behind him, and he saw the water coming closer, _closer—_

A shotgun boomed once, twice, and Mallory shrieked and let him go. He stayed down, arms over his head, until he was sure she was gone. Wet sand clung to his clothes, his skin, his eyelashes. Lake water lapped at the toe of his left boot.

Then Sam was there, shotgun ready at his side. The look on his face reminded Dean of someone else (_the demon_) but he remembered yesterday, remembered Sam pale and still on the sand. This was his brother — his very tall, very angry brother. For an instant, Sam looked like Dad — like Dad's dead-calm,_ Boy, you wanna tell me what the HELL you were thinking?_

Sam offered his left hand. "You okay? We need to get out of here before she comes back." His words were short and clipped. Oh, yeah. He was _pissed._

Dean's head hurt like hell, but he was otherwise surprisingly free of additional damage. He took the offered hand, found his feet, and followed Sam toward the trees, stopping briefly to pick up his shotgun and brush off the sand.

Mallory didn't show back up, and they made it to the cabin safely. Sam threw his shotgun into the trunk a little harder than necessary, then turned. "What the _hell_ were you doing?" No false calm this time — he started out yelling and got progressively louder. His voice broke on the last word, and he started coughing into his sleeve — still didn't sound good, but not as bad as yesterday.

No, Dean decided. He was _not_ going to admit what he'd really been doing. "You said it yourself, man, we had no idea where to start," he said, trying to keep his voice even. "I wanted to see what I could find out. I thought she wanted you, not me. Didn't expect her to go after me like that."

Sam cleared his throat and spat. "Yeah, because ghosts are _so_ good at picking their victims," he snapped. "What were you—"

"I wanted to find out what we were dealing with, and I did," Dean interrupted.

Sam pressed his lips together, made an aborted half-turn toward the car. He always got fidgety when he was mad. "Fine," he said shortly. "What _are_ we dealing with?" Explosion delayed, but still imminent.

"Well, for starters, Decker didn't kill his daughter," Dean said. "Mallory blamed him, but he didn't pull the trigger."

"Then who did?"

"Mallory got possessed," Dean said. "The demon attacked her best friend — or girlfriend, not sure which. The girl got off a shot before the demon killed her. Decker hunted Mallory down, and when he exorcised her..."

"She died from the bullet wound," Sam finished. His brow creased; for the moment, he had forgotten to be angry. "She blamed _him?"_

"Yeah, that's the weird thing," Dean said. "She expected him to save her, I guess. She believed so much that he would." The images Mallory had shown him had been more than a full-screen replay; her emotions had seeped in through the pictures, and he vividly remembered the shock and betrayal she'd felt when her father had let her die. "When he didn't save her — well, I don't have to tell you that ghosts have one-track minds. She made it all about him."

"When did you learn all that?" Sam said. "It didn't look like you were sharing your life stories. More like she was trying to drown you."

"She showed me _before_ she tried to drown me," Dean said. "She told me I would have done the same thing Decker did. I said no, I wouldn't have, so she showed me just what it was that he did. I guess she wanted to prove that she had a right to kill me."

"Justice," Sam muttered. When Dean glanced at him, he clarified, "That's what she said when she pulled me under — 'This is justice.'"

"You said she showed you a blond girl," Dean said. "I'm pretty sure that was Meg Masters. Meg died like Mallory did, and Mallory decided it was our fault — blamed us both for it. So you can stop beating yourself up. It has nothing to do with..." he waved his hand vaguely. _Nothing to do with that unfortunate little mishap where you got yourself possessed, murdered at least one person, and almost killed me._

Sam nodded, staring intently at the Impala's rear tire. When he looked up, Dean swore under his breath.

"You never did tell me what the hell you were thinking," Sam said, anger creeping back into his voice. "You don't just take off on me like that! Especially when you're already hurt!" He jerked his chin toward the shoulder Dean was still favoring.

"Take off on you? Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that was _your_ job!" Dean shot back.

Sam's mouth snapped shut and he turned away, head down. Dean suddenly wasn't mad anymore. Maybe he hadn't really been mad to start with; just needed to lash out, like that punch in Bobby's cabin. Just needed a way to fight back.

(_He didn't fight back when the thing in Sam's skin was beating him, was digging Sam's thumb into the hole in his shoulder. He was just so tired, and it was Sam's face, Sam's hands, Sam's voice doing the hurting. And just before Bobby saved his ass, Dean thought, If this is the way it's going to end, then let it end._)

"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't want you to get hurt, and I thought I could handle it," Dean said. "Let's just go back to the motel, try to figure out what we're gonna do." Sam still wasn't looking at him, and Dean felt guilty, because this time when Sam had walked away, it hadn't been his fault. He hadn't asked that bitch to cram herself down his throat.

Dean couldn't deal with this right now, still couldn't think straight after Mallory's little trip into his head. There were bright flashes like disco lights behind his eyes. He was surprised his brain hadn't leaked out his ears during the ghost's recap of her shitty death.

"Okay," Sam said, with no hint of anger or fear or _anything._

Dean walked to the passenger side, saw Sam's eyes flick over to him. "I'm okay," Dean said. "Little bit of a headache." Sam just nodded and opened the driver's door.

Gravel crunched under the tires as Sam turned back onto the highway. Dean leaned back, adjusting sunglasses over his closed eyes. The sun was still behind clouds, but it was bright enough. This headache reminded him of that time in high school where he got _wasted,_ and his dad made him run ten miles the next day.

Sam was still coughing every few minutes, but the coughs sounded less like "hacking up a lung" and more like "mild bronchitis", which Dean found reassuring. Sam's blistered hands were bandaged and didn't seem to be bothering him, but he was moving stiffly — he had to be sore after chopping all that firewood.

"There's something else," Dean said after a while. He paused, trying to think of a way to make it sound less insane. He couldn't come up with one, so he finally just laid it out. "I think Mallory's still possessed."

Sam slowed and swung wide around a teenager on a bicycle. "That's not possible," he said, keeping his eyes on the road. "Is it?"

"Did you see that little sandstorm she made? Her eyes went black when she did that. I don't know, man — I think she's still possessed, like part of the demon got left behind. I think maybe that's what's holding her here."

"A possessed ghost," Sam said flatly.

"Yeah, it sounds crazy, but I know what I saw. Her eyes were black, and she _felt_ different. More... evil, I guess. She just seemed angry and confused before, like a hundred other vengeful spirits. But when her eyes changed..." He shrugged with his good shoulder. "It was weird."

Sam gave a short laugh, which turned into a cough. "Yeah, well, when are things _not_ weird?"

"Good point," Dean said.

They drove on for a while, past thickets of pine that nearly blotted out the sky. Small dirt roads met the highway here and there, and occasionally Dean caught a glimpse of houses or barns through the trees. One house close to the road had a little girl jumping rope in the front yard, her bright red braids bouncing.

"So, what's the plan?" Sam asked.

Dean glanced over at him. "First things first — I am _starving,_" he said.

"You went out there on an empty stomach?" Sam sounded incredulous, and well he should. Dean would be the first to admit that he didn't do much of anything on an empty stomach. Given a choice between a hot chick and a bacon cheeseburger, he had been known to choose the latter.

"Yeah," he admitted. "I didn't — I wanted to get done before you caught up to me." _I hoped I could __**talk**__ her into letting go before you caught up to me. See if I ever try that again._

Sam shook his head, and his fingers drummed on the wheel. "Dean?" he said quietly.

"Yeah?"

"Don't do that again."

Dean didn't say anything, just waited. Knew his brother well enough to tell that there was more coming.

"I don't — it's not any easier for me to wake up and find you gone than it is for you to wake up and find me gone. Especially after..." Sam sighed, rubbed his jaw. "Just don't, okay? We're in this together."

"Okay," Dean said.

"You promise?"

"I promise."

* * *

Sam insisted on going back to the motel room to get his computer. He wanted to do more research, and he wasn't swayed by Dean's predictions that he wouldn't find any more helpful information. Dean waited in the car; by the time Sam came out, he was starting to get light-headed from hunger. Fortunately, there was a diner not far away. It was old, decorated in orange and lime green, the floor cracked and scuffed, but it looked cleaner than a lot of the places where they stopped to eat.

By the time their menus got there, Sam was already glued to the screen. He distractedly asked for the special. Dean ordered a plate of everything and flirted with the middle-aged waitress, who rolled her eyes but went back to the kitchen blushing.

Dean drummed his fingers on the table and looked around while waiting for the food to get there. The diner held the usual cast of characters: old men with their coffee; a few families; three giggling twentyish women who kept glancing his way. There was a young couple in the corner booth, talking quietly together while their cocoa-skinned toddler sang to himself. The child caught Dean's gaze and beamed, waving a chubby hand. Dean instinctively waved back, then started scratching his head when Sam looked up.

"Huh," Sam said. "I decided to try to find out where Adam Decker was buried, and listen to this. The Deckers have their own plot in the local cemetery. I guess they lived in this area for a long time; it says Decker's great-grandfather was buried there."

"That's fascinating," Dean said. "It helps us how?"

"Don't you think it's a possibility that Decker buried Mallory instead of cremating her? I mean, I know ghosts can hang around even after cremation, but it doesn't happen as often. Maybe Decker wanted his only child to be buried in the family plot."

"So we're gonna look for what? A gravestone that says 'Here lies my beloved daughter Mallory, who is in fact dead even though I told everybody that she went off to college'?"

Sam must not have thought that remark was worthy of a response, so Dean tried using logic. "Why would Mallory be showing up at the lake if she was buried somewhere else?"

"Ghosts aren't always bound to the place where their bodies lie. We've seen that before," Sam said. He shrugged. "I'm just saying, it might be worth checking out. If her body _is_ there, we should be able to find it with the EMF meter."

The waitress came back, expertly balancing their plates on her arms. She smiled at Dean when she put his plate down in front of him, then turned to Sam and assumed the maternal expression that nearly all older women got when they saw his floppy hair and puppy eyes. Sam moved aside the laptop, and she put down a plate loaded with waffles and sausage. To her credit, she managed to refrain from telling Sam to _Eat up, honey, you look so thin._

After she left, Dean said, "I still think he dumped her in the lake, but fine, we'll check it out." His words were muffled by the piece of bacon he'd just shoved into his mouth.

Sam gave a satisfied nod and went back to the laptop, occasionally picking at his food. No wonder he was skinny; half the time he was so busy _thinking_ that he forgot to eat.

"You know one thing we haven't done?" Sam said. "We haven't asked around about the Deckers. In a town this size, most people are bound to know them, or at least know _of_ them."

Dean tipped his head toward the waitress. "She's as good a place to start as any."

When she came back to ask if they needed anything, Dean put on his most charming smile and said, "Actually...Linda, there's one thing you could help us with. Did you know a guy named Adam Decker?"

Her eyes narrowed, lingered on the side of Dean's face that was covered in yellow bruises. "Why do you ask?"

"He was our uncle by marriage, but we never met him," Dean said. "We're on a road trip, and we figured we'd stop by, see if we had any cousins here."

Linda nodded. For a moment Dean was afraid she hadn't bought it, but then she said, "No offense, but your uncle was a strange man. That whole family was a little off."

"Strange how, exactly?" Sam asked, all big, earnest trust-me eyes.

"They were what you might call survivalists, I guess. Stockpiled weapons, trained their kids to fight, that kind of thing." She shrugged, tilted her head. "There were stories...probably just gossip. But they were definitely strange."

Dean nodded thoughtfully, caught Sam's gaze. "Huh," he said.

Linda laughed self-consciously. "Sorry, that's probably not what you wanted to hear. Adam's daughter was a good kid, though. A little odd, like all the Deckers, but sweet. She was best friends with my niece for years. But after Addie...after Addie died, I didn't see Mallory again. She always was eager to get away from here, and with Addie gone...well, I guess she didn't have any reason to come back."

The bell over the door jingled, and Linda's eyes darted toward the family walking in. She straightened, tucked back strands of graying blond hair.

"Thanks for your help, Linda," Sam said. She gave him a distracted smile and moved on to the new customers.

"They were all hunters? The whole family?" Dean said when she was gone.

"Sure sounds like it," Sam said. "Who knows when it started. We could be looking at a family that was hunting back when Samuel Colt was still around."

"And Adam was the last of them."

"The last one who stuck around, anyway."

By the time they finished eating, it was raining, and no slow drizzle this time. The rain made a steady roar on the roof and set the streets and gutters running. Just the short dash to the Impala left them dripping.

"Okay," Dean said, watching sheets of water run down the windshield. "We are _not_ going grave-hunting in this."

Sam couldn't very well argue with that, so he drove back to the motel. The clouds had lowered, thickened, and even though it was barely past noon, the day had descended into a weird half-light.

The rain didn't slow until late evening, when cloudy twilight was fading into night. The cemetery gate was locked, so they parked on the side of the road. Dean pulled on a coat over his already-layered shirts, then got out of the car, walking around to the trunk to get his supplies. His breath puffed out white and hung on the air in front of him. It was cold — damp, bone-chilling cold. Heavy banks of fog had swallowing the tops of the tallest trees.

It had mostly stopped raining, but water still dripped from pine needles and clung to grass blades. The grass was deep and thick, and Dean's pants were soon soaked from the knee down. Not Sam's, of course, because Sam was a freakin' giraffe.

The Deckers' plot was toward the back of the cemetery. It looked like nobody had been there since Adam Decker was buried — the fenced-off section was scraggly and overgrown. The headstones were simple, square and gray and inscribed with nothing but name, birth year, and death year. No "beloved father" or "beloved sister"; no poetry or fake flowers or stone cherubs. It fit Dean's memories of Decker — stern, no-nonsense, not much interest in anything but the hunt. Of course, that was after...

"You know what I don't get?" Dean said, holding up the EMF meter as he moved slowly from grave to grave. "I don't understand how he could just... move on. He told us she was at college, but other than that, he never talked about her. Just acted like she never existed."

"I guess that was how he dealt with it," Sam said, sweeping his flashlight across a headstone. _Joshua Decker, 1894-1899,_ Dean read before Sam's light moved on. "It's not like he'd be the first hunter to hide an ugly past," Sam added.

Wasn't that the truth. Dean was just about convinced that there was no such thing as a well-adjusted hunter. "If local lore is right about the Deckers, they grew up being trained to hunt," he said. "I guess knowing what's out there in the dark doesn't always save you from it."

Sam gave him a look that clearly said, _No shit?_

Dean circled the entire plot twice, but the EMF never made a sound. Sighing, he turned it off. "I don't think there's anything here, man. These Deckers are dead _and_ gone."

"So Mallory's not here." Sam looked worn, cheekbones hollow in the dim light. Dean nodded, shivered and pulled his coat tighter around him. Sam coughed. Without speaking, they both turned back toward the Impala. There was nothing more to do here, nothing to salt and burn, nothing to learn from the silent graves of long-dead hunters.

Just to make things interesting, Dean turned the EMF meter back on before they walked back through the cemetery. If there were any more restless spirits out here, he might as well find them. His life wasn't complicated enough already.

The meter stayed quiet, and they headed back to the motel colder but no closer to a solution. Mallory Decker was still haunting that damn lake, still seeking misguided revenge for her tragic death. Sam was still hacking, Dean could still barely lift his arm, and they were both tired even though they'd slept half the previous day and all night.

They returned to a warm room, with cold still seeping from their clothes. Dean got the first shower; turned on the water as hot as he could stand it and stood under the spray until he could feel his toes again. His headache was coming back, crawling up his spine and settling in the back of his skull, and he could barely keep his eyes open.

He fell asleep before Sam got out of the shower, but jerked awake only a couple of hours later, panting, his sweaty skin sticking to the sheets. He slid his hand beneath the pillow and wrapped his fingers around his bowie knife.

A sliver of light showed beneath the bathroom door, and over the sound of running water, Dean could hear Sam coughing. So that was what woke him up.

He sat up slowly, kicking the covers off his legs, and rested his back against the wall. His shoulder was trying to decide whether to itch or hurt. The room was too warm — Sam must have turned the heat up — and Dean's whole body felt prickly.

Sam came out of the bathroom, turned the light off behind him. "Hey," he said a little hoarsely when he saw Dean sitting up. "Sorry."

" 'S okay," Dean said. He slid back down, pushing the blankets off the edge of the bed. "How's your cough?"

"Not as bad as it was yesterday," Sam said. He climbed into bed, shoved his own blankets away, and crumpled a pillow beneath his head. His breathing evened out except for the occasional stifled cough, and the room fell silent. Dean drifted; his grip on the knife loosened, and the shadows in the corners turned liquid and blurry. His eyes slid shut.

"You still awake?" Sam whispered.

Dean sighed. The bed creaked as he gingerly turned over to face his brother. "No, Sam," he said. "I'm fast asleep, dreaming about Paris Hilton."

"Paris Hilton? Are you _serious?"_

"I didn't say it was a good dream."

Sam snorted. The room was quiet for a moment.

"So, what?" Dean said into the warm darkness.

"What, what?"

"Why did you want to know if I was awake?"

"Just 'cause," Sam said, and Dean couldn't hold back a tired smile. They'd done this a million times when they were kids. Even when he was little, Sam's gargantuan brain never wanted to shut off, and it liked to have company. Nearly drove Dean crazy, because _his_ brain liked sleep.

" 'Cause why?" Dean could still play this game too.

Sam mumbled something unintelligible. In the dim light coming through the window, Dean could see that Sam had turned over onto his back, hands tucked under his head, staring at the ceiling.

"It's hot in here," Sam said instead of answering.

"That's because you turned up the heat so high, genius."

"You were shivering."

"_Were._ Hours ago."

Sam got up and turned down the heat, which meant that the room would be freezing within an hour, according to The Rules of Motel Life.

Dean was awake now, and not likely to go back to sleep right away. At least the couple hours he'd slept had reduced his headache to a dull roar. No more disco lights behind his eyes, which was always a plus.

After Sam climbed back into his bed, Dean said, "I have an idea."

"Oh, _God,"_ Sam said, horror in his voice. After the complete failure of his last idea, Dean figured he deserved that one.

"Shut up," he mumbled. Then, louder: "How much water can you bless at one time?"

Sam was quiet for a while, no doubt trying to figure out what disaster Dean was planning. "Why?" he finally asked.

"Like, could you turn an entire lake into holy water?"

"I don't know." Another pause. "Holy water? _That's_ your plan?"

"You got a better one?" Dean shot back.

"Okay, and why exactly do you think that blessing the lake will get rid of her?"

"Look, man, there's one thing we know for sure: she's haunting the lake. Whether or not her body is there, the lake is what she's tied to, right? Now, if she really _is_ possessed — and I'm pretty damn sure that she is — we've got a demonic ghost haunting a whole lot of water."

"And you think blessing it will get rid of her?" Sam still sounded skeptical.

"Demons and holy water don't exactly get along, right?" Dean said. "It's the best idea we've got, unless you know some way to get her to stay in one place while we exorcise her. Providing, of course, that you know an exorcism that works on ghosts."

Sam grunted.

"If you've got a better idea, please, share with the class," Dean said.

"There's a flaw in your brilliant plan," Sam said. "It calls for us to go _back_ to that stupid lake."

"Which is what getting rid of ghosts usually involves — going wherever they are and dealing with them. I don't see the problem."

"Because we've both had such good luck with this one," Sam said. His eye roll was almost audible.

"Yeah, well, we were both alone the first time we faced her," Dean said. "This time, we'll be together. You do the ritual, I'll watch your back, and we'll get rid of the stupid bitch. Piece of cake."

Sam scoffed. Dean could _feel_ the bitchface aimed at him, even in the dark. He rolled over onto his back, out of the line of glare. "Like I said, if you've got a better plan, let's hear it."

"We could always try dragging the lake," Sam said. "Maybe if we found her body—"

"Yes, because lake-dragging equipment is so easy to come by. We'll just borrow some from a neighbor."

"Shut up," Sam muttered. After a minute, he said, "Okay, but I don't like it. The ritual takes a while, and Mallory hasn't shown herself to be particularly patient. You know she's gonna show up."

"Which is why I'll be waiting to blast her ghostly ass full of rock salt."

"I'm just saying, it's risky."

He had a point, but... "Since when is anything we do _not_ risky?" Dean said. "This is totally not the worst plan we've ever had." _That was yesterday. Ghost whisperer, my ass._

Sam snorted. "Oh, that makes me feel so much better. It's not _worse_ than the chupacabra trap, so it has to work, is that what you're saying?"

"Did you _have_ to bring that up?" Dean whined. For the record, it hadn't been his plan. Well, mostly not his. Kinda not his.

"What? I thought you looked hot dressed up as a goat," Sam said innocently.

Dean choked. "Oh my _God._ That is _wrong."_

Sam started laughing, that sudden high-pitched laugh he'd had since he was a toddler, the kind that made people laugh along whether they wanted to or not. It was the first real laugh Dean had heard from him since they left Bobby's.

Dean smiled; one mission accomplished. Now to get rid of the demonic ghost with daddy issues.

_My life is so weird._

**tbc...**


	4. four

**notes, disclaimers, etc.:** See first chapter.

* * *

_Sam clawed out of the darkness to find himself staring down a gun barrel at his own brother. Bang, splash, and Dean was gone. A loon called. Meg laughed and laughed in his head, and Sam thought why, why wouldn't he shoot, why—_

—_and then he was underwater, so so cold, and Mallory was holding him down, Mallory was saying I know what you did._

_I know that you killed him._

Sam woke up struggling to breathe, his face pressed hard into his pillow. He jerked his head up, gasping, coughing out the memory of water filling his lungs. His dream lingered; when he closed his eyes he could still see Dean falling from the dock, surprise flashing across his face before he disappeared.

It was morning; pale light was just beginning to filter through the blinds. The room was freezing. Dean, who at some point had kicked all his blankets off onto the floor, was curled up in the middle of his bed, one hand tucked palm-up beneath his cheek. He looked all of seven years old. When Sam tossed the blankets back over him, he curled tighter and mumbled something about a chupacabra. Sam smirked while he went over to turn the heat back up. That was one hunt Dean would never forget.

Sam had decided to let Dean sleep as long as he wanted, but the puddle of blankets stirred after just a few minutes, and Dean's prickly, tousled head emerged. " 'S cold," he mumbled.

"You made me turn the heat down last night, remember?"

Dean looked puzzled; his three functioning brain cells evidently couldn't grasp such an advanced concept. It was all they could do to produce a slurred petition for "Coffee?"

"Not yet. We'll get some when we go for breakfast."

Dean gave a longsuffering sigh and sat all the way up. The blankets slid down to his waist, revealing crisscrossed scars and a clean white bandage on his shoulder. There would be one more marker written on Dean's skin, one more inscription for his Book of History: _here, the demon that killed my mother wore my father's face and tried to rip my heart out from the inside. Here, that demon's daughter wore my brother's face and shot me off a dock in Duluth._

Sam looked away. There were so many scars, and a few of them told stories he didn't know. He'd learned long ago that some questions were better left unasked.

Dean stumbled through getting dressed, and they headed for the diner. After breakfast, Sam called Bobby to find out the best (and fastest) way to bless water. Bobby wasn't sure about the scope of the ritual, but he didn't rule out the idea that it might bless an entire lake. He called it a "damn fool plan", and Sam quickly volunteered that it was Dean's. Bobby snorted. "And you couldn't come up with anything better?"

Sam's silence was answer enough.

"Just be careful," Bobby said. "I know it's a lot to ask, but _try_ not to get yourselves killed."

* * *

The clouds had moved out overnight, and the sky was so blue it hurt Sam's eyes. The lake was choppy, driven by a strong north wind. Despite the wind, the sun felt warm on Sam's back. He squinted across the lake; he could just make out the trees on the other side.

Dean was antsy, even before they walked out onto the sand bar. He checked his shotgun half a dozen times on the walk from the cabin. "You sure you got that ritual written down right?" he asked.

"Yeah." Sam held up a spiral notebook, his own version of a hunter's journal. "I had Bobby read it to me twice. He said it was a ritual Dad used to use."

Dean nodded, satisfied. Dad was gone, but Dean still trusted him absolutely — if it had been Dad's ritual, then Dean believed that it would work. Sam had spent most of his life equally confused and frustrated by that blind trust.

Dean stood back while Sam got ready. The ritual was relatively simple — no symbols to draw, no trap to set, just the words and the beads and the crucifix. Sam knelt at the edge of the water, put his shotgun down beside him, opened his notebook, and began.

"_Exorcizo te, creatura aquæ..."_

He got out exactly four words before she showed up. There wasn't much warning — just sudden cold, a blast of wind that ruffled the pages of his notebook.

Then Dean shouted "Sam, down!" and fired twice, the second shot close enough that salt burned the side of Sam's face. He ducked and rolled away, hanging onto the notebook and the rosary beads.

"Keep reading, I'll keep her busy!" Dean sounded out of breath. He fired again, the shot followed closely by a solid _thud._ Sam kept his eyes on the page, words flowing from his tongue. He willed Dean to fire again, to say something, to be okay.

The wind picked up, whistled around Sam's ears, threw sand into his eyes. He clung to the fluttering pages and kept reading, raising his voice against the storm. Mallory didn't like what he was doing, and that was good enough for him. He could _feel_ the anger, her fury building as she regained strength.

_Where was Dean?_

The air crackled, buzzed with static that raised the hairs on the back of Sam's neck, and Mallory appeared a few feet to his left. Sand swirled around them, cutting off Sam's view of the world outside. He held onto the fragile paper with stiff, blistered fingers. Tried to keep reading, but his voice cracked, the cadence lost.

Mallory walked forward, and Sam went down, choking. His throat was on fire, and he couldn't draw breath into lungs that seemed filled with sand. His fingers closed over his own gun, but lack of oxygen left him too weak to lift it. The world swirled with black spots—

And then Dean fired, three times in quick succession. Sam flattened himself on the ground, knowing Dean couldn't see what he was shooting at. One of the shots must have found its mark, because the wind stopped suddenly and the swirling curtain of sand fell back to the ground. Sam sat up, scrambled for the notebook. It was at the edge of the water, half-buried in sand. He pulled it out, shook it off, and started flipping pages, searching for the ritual.

"Finish it, Sam!" Dean called. A quick glance showed Dean hunched forward, left arm held against his side, right arm rigidly pointing the shotgun. Sam looked back down, found his place and picked up where he'd left off, voice stutter-starting and then falling back into rhythm.

Wind gusted, and Dean yelled, sudden and wordless. _Boom, boom,_ and Sam looked up, saw his brother turning, firing into the gale. Then the shotgun was torn from Dean's grip and he flew back, hit the ground with an ugly _crunch_. His boots jerked and his fingers clawed at the sand as he twisted weakly, trying to get his feet under him, get up, get to his gun.

Sam kept going. _Just a minute, just one more minute..._

Dean gagged and wheezed, and his back arched as he tried to draw a breath. His thrashing slowed until his boots were still in the scuffed sand. Sam's eyes flicked to his brother, then down to the Latin words that could end this. _Focus, Sam. You have to focus._

A flicker of motion brought Sam's gaze back up. Mallory stood between him and Dean, head lowered. She looked up and blinked, and her eyes went black for an instant. Sam fumbled for his gun with his free hand, but he had lost track of it during her first attack. The spell was the only weapon he had now.

"Stop!" Mallory said, and Sam gritted his teeth as her voice vibrated inside his skull. Her eyes flickered, _greenblackgreenblack_. She wasn't human anymore — wasn't anything that had ever been human.

Dean was totally still now. There was blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and Sam could hear him trying to breathe from twenty feet away.

"I'll kill him," Mallory said, her eyes like coal. "You stop, or I'll kill him."

_You'll kill him anyway,_ Sam thought. His throat felt shredded and he could taste blood on the back of his tongue, but he raised his voice anyway. _"Per invocationem sancti tui nominis expetita, ab omnibus sit impugnationibus defensa_._"_

She shrieked, and a shock wave hit Sam in the chest. He lost his hold on the book but clung to the rosary, tangled it around his fingers as he flew back toward the lake. _"Per Dominum, amen!"_ He shouted, a second before he went under. He lost his grip on the rosary, but it had found the water, and that was all it needed.

Sam surfaced, gasping, water streaming into his eyes, and the first thing he heard was Mallory's scream. Her face distorted, and for an instant Sam saw a hideous form superimposed over her own. Her phantom body sizzled, skin melted from bone—

And then she was gone.

Sam was still for a moment, stunned that it had worked, half expecting her to reappear. When she didn't, he got his feet under him and splashed to the shore, tripping as soon as he hit dry sand. _Dean. Oh God, Dean._

He couldn't hear the labored breathing anymore.

"Dean." Sam dropped to his knees beside his brother, hands out. Dean was lying on his back, face turned up, eyes closed. Sam reached out a trembling hand to feel for a pulse. "Dean, hey, come on..."

Dean's head rolled to the side, and he drew a shallow breath, then another. His eyelashes fluttered, and he squinted at the bright sky. "Di'we gi'er?" he slurred.

"Yeah." Sam sat back, light-headed with relief, starting to shake as cold overtook adrenaline. "Yeah, man, we got her. You were right — the ritual worked."

Dean nodded, then grimaced and spat out a mouthful of blood. Up close, Sam could see the deep cut in his lip, the fresh bruising along the side of his jaw. His skin was grayish and his breathing still shallow, but he was _awake,_ was conscious and talking, and that was the important thing.

The wind had slowed, but there was still enough of a breeze to plaster Sam's wet clothes against his skin. He shivered, and Dean caught the movement, recognized the reason for it. "Took another swim, huh?"

"Yeah, seemed like a good day for it," Sam said. He clenched his jaw to stop his teeth chattering. Tried to suppress a cough, but it broke loose, tore through his raw throat like razor wire.

Dean tried to sit up, sank back down with a groan. His face went white and he squeezed his eyes shut as sweat gleamed on his forehead.

"Your shoulder?" Sam said, already reaching for it, pulling back Dean's jacket to look for blood.

"Shoulder's okay," Dean said breathlessly. "Ribs not so much." Well, that explained the shallow breathing.

Dean held out his right hand. "Help me up."

"You sure?"

"It's just a couple of cracked ribs. Nothin' I haven't had before." Dean swallowed, scrunched his eyebrows together. "Dude, I feel like I've been gargling sand."

Sam snorted softly. "Me too." He took Dean's outstretched hand and pulled him up. Dean bent over, hand against his side, breathing in choppy gasps.

"You okay?" Sam said.

"Yeah... just... gimme a minute." Dean straightened a little, his left arm still bracing the broken ribs. "Man... she was... a _bitch._"

"No kidding." Sam coughed again. She'd done a number on his throat.

"What happened to your face?" Dean asked.

Sam reached up to touch his cheek; his fingers came away slightly sticky. "Oh, that. You grazed me with rock salt when you were shooting at Mallory." He gently poked at the inflamed skin. "It'll be okay."

"Sorry, there was a lot of sand flying around. I guess we're..." Dean trailed off and tensed, staring at the lake. "Sam!"

_Oh, no. No no._ Sam turned. Both of their shotguns were lost in the sand, and if the ritual hadn't worked...

There was a body in the water at the edge of the lake, face-down, bloated and decayed. A few strands of matted dark hair floated around it like rotten seaweed. It drifted with the wind, nudging up against the shore. White bone showed through the sparse hair, through holes in the disintegrating clothes. The smell of death hit them in the face.

_Mallory._

"Well, now we know where the body is," Dean said.

Sam took a few steps closer to the corpse. It didn't move, except to rock gently back and forth with the motion of the water. "We need to salt and burn her," he said.

"First things first." Dean moved up beside him, placing each step carefully to avoid jarring his broken ribs. "You're freezing, and it's windy. We need to get you dried off and warmed up before we do anything else."

"No." Sam set his jaw against the tremors that threatened to rattle his teeth together. "I'm not leaving here until I _know_ she's gone."

"She's gone, Sam! You said it yourself, the ritual worked."

"It worked on the part of her that was demon, but we don't know that that was the only thing holding her here." Sam shook his head stubbornly. "No. I want to be sure this is over."

"_Fine,"_ Dean snapped. "At least take off your jacket." Slowly, with much grimacing, he peeled off his own coat and jacket and tossed them at Sam.

Shivering, Sam took off his layered shirts and put on Dean's dry clothing. Then he dug their shotguns out of the sand while Dean walked back to the edge of the woods, where they'd left the duffel bag. Dean came back a minute later with lighter fluid, salt, and matches. "Gonna take the whole damn bottle to toast her," he muttered. "Now, who's gonna get her out of the water?"

"I will. My pants are already wet anyway, and I don't have broken ribs." Sam stared at the corpse, disgusted. "Can I just... I'll find a stick or something to drag her in. I don't want to touch her."

"Don't blame you," Dean said.

Sam made his own trek to the woods, had to stop once to have a coughing fit. The pain in his throat was easing, but he still had the leftover congestion to deal with.

He came back with a long, forked pine branch, which he used to drag the body up onto the beach. The corpse rolled over, showing empty eye sockets and darkened teeth beneath gray tatters of rotting skin. Jacket sleeve over his mouth and nose, Sam moved back while Dean soaked the body down with salt and lighter fluid.

Dean had always been a bit of a pyro, and he liked to do the corpse-toasting whenever possible. He lit a match, raised his hand to throw it, and then just stopped.

"Dean?" Sam said. Flame crept down the matchstick toward Dean's fingers, but he didn't move. Sam took a step forward. "Dean?"

Dean cried out and stumbled forward, both hands going to his head. He dropped the match, and it sizzled out on the sand. Dean fell to his knees, eyes squeezed shut, still clutching his head. A nebulous gray haze hung in the air around him, too close for Sam to shoot at it unless he wanted to blow off the back of his brother's skull.

"_Dean!"_ Sam moved without thought. He dug the lighter out of his pocket, flicked it on, and threw it at the corpse. The lighter fluid ignited with a _whoosh,_ and the mist hanging around Dean's head disappeared. He stayed on his knees, only a few feet from the burning body, until Sam pulled him up and guided him away.

"Hey, hey," Sam said, "you with me?"

"Yeah." Dean lowered his hands, but kept his eyes closed. "She said..."

"What?"

"She said thank you."

"That — that was to say _thank you?"_

"Yeah, she has a weird way of showing gratitude." He eased his eyes open, squinting against the sunlight. "But she was glad... to be free. She wanted us to know that."

In a weird way, Sam understood. Even dead, Mallory hadn't been rid of the evil that had crawled inside her skin. Just the thought of existing that way — dead, still possessed, trapped between worlds — made his skin crawl. He stood close enough to be warmed by the flames, and watched Mallory's body burn to ash.

"Come on," Dean said. "Now we know she's gone. It's time to get back to the motel, get you into some dry clothes."

"You need a doctor," Sam said. Dean still couldn't straighten all the way; he was trying to pretend that he was fine, but the pain lines in his forehead said otherwise.

"No, I need to _not_ have a ghost crawling around in my head!" Dean glanced over his shoulder, toward the choppy water. "And no more goddamn lakes. I hate lakes."

_Bang, splash, and Dean was gone._

"Yeah," Sam said. "Me too."

* * *

By the time they reached the Impala, Dean had stopped to throw up twice, and spikes of his sweat-soaked hair were plastered to his face. Puking was miserable enough without broken ribs; with them, it was agony. He was still refusing to go to the ER, but he had agreed to visit an urgent care clinic, just to verify that Mallory hadn't scrambled his brains and his broken ribs hadn't poked holes in anything vital. In return, he was insisting that Sam had to get his cough checked out.

Sam got his brother settled into the passenger seat, then went around to the driver's side. He put the key in the ignition, then stopped, staring at the cabin. Those dingy walls had sheltered hunters, a family of people who knew what was in the darkness and dedicated themselves to stopping it.

"Hell of a way for them to end," Dean said quietly.

"Yeah," Sam said. A hunter's child becoming the hunted... it hit a little too close to home.

Denim rasped against leather as Dean shifted, angled his body to face his brother. "We won't," he said.

Sam glanced up, pretty sure that Dean was continuing a conversation that had never been started. "Huh?"

"End like that. We won't." Dean grinned, wide and cocky, and for a moment the pain lines on his face melted into eye crinkles. "If we go out, Sammy, it'll be in a blaze of glory. Together, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Hell, they'll probably make a movie about us."

_I'll save you,_ he didn't say. _I'll protect you. No matter what happens... you won't end up like her. I'll make sure of it._

He didn't say it, but Sam heard it anyway.

"Yeah." He couldn't help but smile back. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

"Now let's get the hell out of here." Dean eased back in the seat, settled sunglasses over his eyes.

Still smiling, Sam shook his head, and started the Impala with a roar that drove birds out of the pine trees, sent them flapping up and away into a clear blue sky.

* * *

**(finis)**


End file.
